


A Family Portrait In Soft Lighting

by Fearful_little_thing



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Parent Derek, Parent Stiles, Teenage Rebellion, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 03:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fearful_little_thing/pseuds/Fearful_little_thing
Summary: Everything was so much easier when the kids were small. When the kids were small their problems had been small too. Easily fixed by hugs or hot chocolates, with kisses to boo-boos and ten minute time outs when they misbehaved.Now things aren't so simple and the problems aren't so small.Derek and Stiles love their kids. It's just that raising two delinquent teenagers is a lot harder than it looked.





	A Family Portrait In Soft Lighting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nogitsune_lichen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nogitsune_lichen/gifts).



> This is for nogitsune_lichen via the Sterek Exchange 2017. I hope I managed to do justice to your prompt, even though it kind of veered a little to the left and didn't wind up with as much detail as I initially planned.

Jeremy stumbled in through the front door at 6am, bleary eyed and unsteady on his feet. His clothes were rumpled and there was a suspicious stain on his shirt. He turned around to shut the door behind him and nearly stumbled into the wall, tripping over nothing but his own drunkeness.

Stiles stiffened where he sat, back gone ramrod straight the second he'd heard the sound of a key in the lock. His neck was sore and stiff, his back aching from having fallen asleep on the couch. He still had his phone in his hand, fingers stiff from clutching it tight even while asleep. The last thing he remembered it was 4am and he'd just gotten off the phone with Derek.

For just a moment Stiles watched his eldest waver in the hallway, the teenager fumbling with his pockets and frowning, still too inebriated to realise he'd left his keys in the door. All of the worry and anger and helplessness he'd felt the night before washed over Stiles in a wave.

Had he done this to his father when he was Jeremy's age?

Was it better or worse that Stiles' misdemeanours were mostly supernatural in origin and not a product of his own bad decisions?

He stood, feeling his back protest and start to cramp up. His knees cracked, twin snaps that sounded far too loud to be healthy. The sound made Jeremy jump, his head jerking around to look his father in the eye. Stiles knew he shouldn't feel glad that the sight of him standing there in the living room made the colour drain from his son's face.

“Dad,” Jeremy croaked, his voice hoarse like he'd been shouting all night. For all Stiles knew he had been.

“Jer,” Stiles replied, in the voice Derek had once jokingly referred to as his 'dad tone' – the one that eerily reminded them both of Stiles' own father. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Jeremy looked down. He fiddled with the cuffs of his jacket, pulling the material down over his knuckles clumsily. “...early?” he offered, after a significant enough pause that Stiles was beginning to think he wouldn't say anything at all.

“It's six in the morning, Jeremy,” Stiles informed his son, arms crossed, disapproving look on his face. “And what time is your curfew?”

“...midnight,” Jeremy mumbled at the floor.

“Midnight,” Stiles repeated. “And you _know_ we're flexible about it, Jer. Five minutes, fifteen minutes, that's not a big deal. Half an hour, ok, especially if you called to let us know you were running late. But _six hours_? Six hours, Jeremy! Six hours and you come home drunk and smelling like you just rolled out of a tobacco factory. You didn't call, you didn't text – we didn't know where you were! I was so worried I almost asked your father to track your scent –”

It hadn't seemed possible, but Jeremy went even paler at that, actually looking as though he might faint. “Pa isn't...”

“No,” Stiles sighed, all the anger draining out of him at the sight of his son looking so small. “Derek isn't home yet.” He uncrossed his arms and ran a hand through his hair, watching the way the teenager's shoulders sagged in relief.

It was ironic. Derek was as soft as a marshmallow on the inside, but he was still the one the kids were scared of. Stiles, hard-assed as he may be when doling out lectures and punishments, couldn't quite compete with Derek's naturally intimidating glower. It didn't matter that 'Pa' never actually shouted, or grounded, or took away privileges. He glared (and, the kids had learned at some unfortunate point in the past, had once been accused of murder), so he was the scary one.

“But,” Stiles added, “I did call and tell him to keep an eye out for you –” Jeremy blanched, looking like he might throw up “–so don't think that means you're off the hook, buddy.”

Jeremy swayed a little, raising a hand to cover his mouth. “I think I'm going to throw up,” he said thickly, then bolted for the downstairs bathroom, surprisingly nimble on his feet for someone who could barely stand upright properly.

Stiles sighed again. Heavily. He scrubbed a hand through his hair again and unlocked his phone so he could type out a quick text to Derek.

'delinquent is home'

A few seconds later he received a two character response consisting of a thumbs up emoji and a frowny face.

Stiles snorted in dry amusement at his husband's eloquence and informed him 'he's drunk'

Two frowny faces.

Stiles shook his head and shoved the phone into his pocket, then trudged to the bathroom where Jeremy was bent over the toilet bowl, alternating between miserable sniffling and rejecting the mostly-liquid contents of his stomach. Stiles wet a wash cloth and crouched down beside the teen so he could rub his back while he waited for him to stop throwing up. “That's it,” Stiles murmured soothingly, his tone much gentler than his words, “get it all out, you idiot delinquent. Then we'll get you to bed. You can face the music when you wake up.”

And by then Derek should be home from work, which meant he could lend his intimidating eyebrows to Stiles' lecture.

He regretted ever laughing when his father had told him he'd know how it feels one day when he had his own children.

* * *

 

It had been easier when the kids were younger. Even during tantrums when one or the other had inevitably shouted out heated I hate you's and you're not my real parents, it had been easier. When the kids were small their problems had been small too. Easily fixed by hugs or hot chocolates, with kisses to boo-boos and ten minute time outs when they misbehaved. The insecurities that came from being adopted – from having been in the foster system for a couple of years before Stiles and Derek found them – were solved with patience and love.

Kind words.

_I love you, goodnight_ , and kisses on the forehead when they tucked the kids in.

As hard and stressful as it had been at first it had also been worth it to see these two children – their two children – change from shy, sullen little creatures into cheerful, rambunctious little monkey-creatures with endless smiles for their two adoptive fathers.

Stiles had given up working full time for them and it had been worth it. Derek had changed career paths so he could stop travelling and work closer to home. They'd gotten rid of their apartment and bought a house instead, some middle-class monstrosity in a nice neighbourhood with a big yard and a sturdy wooden fence. Derek had sunk the last of his inheritance into preparing for their kids' future, happily exchanging stock options and industrial real estate for high interest term deposits. The 'safer option', according to him.

It hadn't been perfect – nobody's life was ever perfect – but it had been close.

* * *

 

Helena was fourteen years old. _Fourteen_.

Derek stood in the bathroom doorway, utterly speechless with a combination of fury and mortification. Unable to form any kind of sentence in his mind, let alone with his mouth, he simply stood there staring at his daughter and the pregnancy test held in her hand while Helena stared back with wide, guilty eyes.

He hadn't even known she had a boyfriend.

And maybe she didn't – the thought struck him like a physical blow, making his chest tighten and his teeth grind together – you didn't need to be in a relationship to sleep with someone. He knew that himself from his own past misdeeds and a youth spent running from guilt, walking the fine line between self destruction and keeping his head above water.

Helena was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, white stick held in one hand and the box in the other, clearly having been waiting for the results of the test when he'd walked in with the intention to ask if she wanted a cup of the tea he was about to make. The door had been closed but not locked, the agreed-upon sign that whoever was in the bathroom was decently clothed and not using the facilities. She must have forgotten to lock it, he thought. Or she must have assumed that she was safe upstairs, what with her brother out at a friend's place for the afternoon and Stiles at work. She'd clearly forgotten that Derek had the weekend off this week.

“Pa,” Helena started, box and test going behind her back in a belated attempt to hide them, “it's not what it looks like, I swear!”

Derek swallowed. He forced his own heartbeat to calm, forced his face into a more neutral expression, and somehow managed to articulate a response; “It's not.”

His voice had come out flat, sounding like a statement and not the question he'd been intending.

Helena flushed, her eyes going bright with tears. Derek could smell her embarrassment, a sickly, sour scent that curled around and through the vanilla of her shampoo and the faint, unavoidable traces of urine from the test itself. “I just – I – Mary thinks she's pregnant,” Helena blurted, fat tears spilling from her large hazel eyes as she stared up at her father pleadingly. “She was scared to go buy a test by herself so we went with her after school and we all got one too.”

Derek blinked, chest going tight when he caught the sound of a lie in her heartbeat. He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He would have thought, after a million failed childhood lies, that his baby girl would know by now that it was nearly impossible to lie to a werewolf. Especially a werewolf who also happened to be a parent.

“Helena...”

One word. One word, soft and disappointed, was all it took for the teenager to burst into proper tears. The box and test fell into the bathtub with a clatter, Helena's arms wrapping around herself as she sobbed. “I'm sorry,” she whimpered, voice thick with emotion. “Daddy, I'm so sorry!”

How could he stay angry at that? Derek moved without thinking. One moment he was standing in the doorway, the next he was pulling his little girl into his arms and letting her sob against his chest. At least he could see, over the top of her dark, wavy hair, that there was only one line in the little window on the pregnancy test. Negative, he thought with genuine relief. At least the test was negative.

* * *

 

They'd been together for years, married for two before the children came along.

Kids had been an abstract at the time. Something they'd talked about fondly but without any solid plans to acquire any of their own. It was a subject for the future, a 'someday' kind of concept that was nice to imagine sometimes on quiet nights when they were curled up together on the couch.

Then Scott, who had somehow done a graceful pirouette from studying veterinary medicine to early childhood education and become a preschool teacher, had started mentioning a boy in his class. A sad little boy who was very bright, but had difficulty with the other children. A little boy who, it turned out, lived in an underfunded foster home with ten other children and his three year old sister.

After hearing about this boy for months – at their weekly dinners with Scott and Kira, when Derek ran into Scott at the cafe by the department, or when Stiles dropped by to pick up the excess muffins from one of Kira's baking sprees – they'd finally gotten curious enough (and fed up enough) to look into the boy's situation themselves.

It had taken exactly one week after that before they'd managed to wrangle up the right paperwork and permissions to become foster parents. To this day Derek refused to divulge what exactly he'd had to say or do to get the state of California to overlook his police record.

From there it was just a hop-skip and a bundle of papers before both the little boy and his sister were under their care.

Two years later they were 'dad' and 'pa' respectively, with a shiny new set of adoption papers to make it official.

* * *

 

_Don't tell dad_ , Helena had said. But he had to. It wasn't the kind of thing he could keep to himself, even if he hadn't needed to be able to talk about it to someone he didn't also need to parent.

Derek sat on their bed and ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the strands for the tiny bursts of grounding pain. He couldn't help but think that the streaks of grey at his temples were from all the stress of dealing with teenagers and their drama. He felt the mattress dip, the comforting scent of mate wrapping around his senses in the same way that Stiles himself wrapped his arms around Derek's shoulders.

“Tell me?” Stiles asked, murmuring the question to the side of Derek's neck, nose nuzzling against his skin. “Come on, big guy, I know something's wrong. You've been weird all night.”

“Helena,” Derek started, then paused for a sigh. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then leaned into his mate's embrace, tilting his head back. “She took a pregnancy test today... I walked in on her waiting for the results or I don't think she would have said anything.”

Stiles froze. Derek could hear his heart stutter. “She – she isn't...?”

Derek shook his head, putting a hand over Stiles' reassuringly. “She's not. But she was worried, and that means she's sexually active... And I don't like that. I don't like that she didn't tell me. I don't like that she's lying to us.” Derek groaned, then flopped back on the bed, his weight forcing his mate down as well. Stiles went with a squeak, one arm flying out in surprise before he recovered and rearranged their limbs so they were cuddling. Derek nuzzled into his shoulder. “I really don't like that she's lying to us.”

Stiles was silent a moment, his long fingers stroking over Derek's skin. “We can't force her to talk to us,” he said, somewhat reluctantly and in a tone that implied that he wished he _could_ force conversation on their daughter. “We just have to let her know she can come to us with anything, and respect her privacy enough to... to not read her freaking diary like I really, _really_ want to right now. Jeez.”

“The parenting books say that's a bad idea,” Derek agreed dryly, though he too wished he could get some kind of insight into his daughter's life and what secrets she might be keeping from them. If she was doing anything dangerous. If there was anyone he needed to maim for daring to lay a hand on his little girl.

“I know,” Stiles nodded, clearly frustrated. “I know, man do I know. I would have flipped the hell out if dad had ever snooped on me like that – despite, you know, totally deserving it now that I think about it. If we go snooping we lose her trust and then she'll never tell us _anything_ or come to us when she's in trouble. I _need_ them to know they can come to us, Der.”

Derek shifted on the bed until he was face to face with his husband. He raised a hand to brush his fingertips over the side of Stiles' cheek, eyes flitting over his face. They'd changed over the years, the both of them. Stiles had lines around his eyes and mouth. Laugh lines all of them, but when he frowned like this they were deeper somehow, harder. He had flecks of white in his hair, noticeable more under bright, electric lights than in the sun. He wasn't as lean as he'd been in his youth, though he was still slender, his shoulders still wide and his body just as beautiful.

“At least they're not out chasing werewolves,” Stiles grumbled, unaware of Derek's thought tangent.

Derek snorted. “Or showing up at crime scenes.”

“Getting kidnapped by creepy cougars.”

“Telling us they're going camping and driving to Mexico.”

Stiles groaned, though he couldn't help a small chuckle as well. “That one was kind of your fault, you know. God,” he shook his head ruefully. “From an outside perspective I was a horrible little shit.”

“From an inside perspective too.”

“Hey!”

“You're still a little shit,” Derek smirked.

Stiles punched his arm. For a moment he was smiling again, tension gone, then his thoughts turned back to their kids and the moment was gone. “What do we do, Der?”

* * *

 

“Hello?”

“Is this Mr Stilinski?” the voice coming from the phone speaker was firm, but polite. The kind of tone people used when they had bad news, or when they thought you were bad news but were too polite to say so.

“Yeah, this is he,” Stiles answered, patting his pockets with his free hand to check he had everything on him. Wallet, keys, phone was in his other hand... “What can I do for you?”

“I'm Donna Akkerman,” the woman on the phone told him, “I'm from Beacon Hills High School. I was hoping to speak to you about your son, Jeremy. Do you have a moment?”

“Uhhh....” Stiles quickly glanced at the time. He had a few minutes before he had to leave, and he'd been working at the supermarket long enough to be allowed a little leeway in when exactly he arrived for his shifts. (It helped that the store was small and locally owned, and that his boss could be bribed with cookies.)

“Sure, I've got time,” Stiles said decisively, not about to hang up on someone who might be about to ask him to come pick up his sick teenager or to reluctantly inform him that Jeremy had broken something during gym class.

“Good. Thankyou, Mr Stilinski. I understand you requested to be notified by phone of any issues to do with your children, is that correct?”

“It is,” Stiles confirmed warily. They'd decided on that years ago, since for the both of them phone calls meant important things and texts were for conversation. “What's this about?”

“I'm calling in regards to Jeremy's absence at school today,” Donna replied, still in her polite, professional tone. “He -”

“His _what_?” Stiles interrupted before she could continue.

“His absence at school,” Donna repeated firmly, “though,” she added a moment later, a hint of sympathy creeping into her polite tone, “I suppose that answers whether or not you'd intended to call the school. Mr Stilinski, I'm afraid this is Jeremy's second unexplained absence this week, which is why I'm calling. It's school policy to inform parents if their children have more than one unexplained absence in a reasonably short amount of time. Some of the time we find that parents have just forgotten to call in and let us know what's going on, but some of the time, unfortunately, it turns out they didn't know their child was absent at all. I'm very sorry to have had to inform you like this, but I should also let you know that if a student accrues more than three unexplained absences in a row they may be reported to the state for truancy.”

Stiles felt his face go hot, his body tight with anger. He paled just as rapidly with a sudden stab of anxiety to his chest, suddenly recalling all of the old dangers of Beacon Hills and the troubles a teenager could get into in the woods.

“Thankyou for telling me,” Stiles said after a moment, his voice tight. “I'll make sure Jeremy doesn't miss any more days this week.”

He hung up after exchanging polite goodbyes, then immediately called in to cancel his afternoon shift at the supermarket. His boss was understanding, though obviously a bit annoyed at the short notice, but since he had kids of his own he told Stiles he'd let it slide. After that, Stiles finally called his husband, hoping that Derek wasn't in the middle of something and could actually answer his phone.

“Stiles,” Derek answered on the third ring, which told him that he'd either been at his desk at the station or sitting in a squad car on speed trap duty.

“Jeremy's not in school,” Stiles told him without preamble, pacing up and down the hallway as he tried to figure out what exactly to do. Should he go out looking? Comb the woods and all the other 'good' spots for skipping that he remembered from his own highschool days? Or should he wait until Jeremy came home and confront him then? On home ground, having had time to mentally prepare himself for the fight that was sure to ensue.

“The school called,” Stiles continued, “to ask if I'd forgotten to let them know he'd be absent. This is his second day skipping, Der – his _second_ day _this week_. I'm just – I'm frickin' beside myself – I don't know what the hell to do here I'm so _angry_ with him and I'm also worried that he's gone and fallen down a well or something or we'll have to go drive to Mexico to go rescue him because some asshole we killed is back from the dead and decided our kid would be a great way of getting revenge...”

Knowing him as well as he did, Derek had waited until Stiles ran out of breath to try and interrupt, listening to him gasp in a breath as he spoke; “Stiles, he's not in Mexico. He's not kidnapped. I promise you.”

“How do you _know_? You remember what it was like when we were young, right? You remember all the enemies we had! What if one of them is back to seduce Jeremy over to the dark side? What if he's out in the woods doing drugs with Gerard's cousin's youngest daughter? Oh my god, _what if he's on drugs_!?”

With a former sheriff as a father and a current deputy as a husband Stiles knew all about the statistics of teen drug use.

“I activated the GPS on his phone,” Derek said, sounding much calmer than Stiles felt (though he was probably just as angry and freaked out). “He's still in Beacon Hills.” A beat. “He's at the mall.”

“...He is so frickin' grounded.”

“I'm on patrol this afternoon. I can go pick him up.”

“Yeah,” Stiles nodded to himself, picturing Derek showing up in full uniform to escort their truant son out of the mall. “Yeah, freak him and his little delinquent friends right the hell out.”

“I'll bring him home, but I have to go back on call afterwards.”

* * *

 

The five year old boy had looked around the big, cheerfully coloured empty house with wide brown eyes filled with a mix of wariness and awe – as if he wasn't quite sure that what was happening was real. The walls were painted a warm light yellow, a peaceful, sunny colour that matched the polished wood floors. The little girl beside him had one hand clutched tightly around his, the other hugging a worn old doll to her chest. She was silent, her eyes on their new foster parents and not on the house.

“Well,” the man who'd introduced himself as 'Stiles' asked in a friendly voice, crouching down to their level with a big smile on his face, “what do you think?”

The boy looked at the other man, the man that was smiling with his eyes but not with his mouth, then back at Stiles. Jeremy shrugged, still not sure what to think of everything that was happening. He liked not being in the other house, the one filled with other kids and tired adults who didn't pay much attention to him or his sister. He liked that he didn't have to leave her behind like that one lady had said he would. Jeremy shrugged his little shoulders, mumbling to the floor; “It's big.”

“That's so you can have a room all to yourself,” Stiles told him, adding on “if you want” when Helena's eyes went wide and scared. She was still afraid of monsters in closets and under beds. Jeremy was too, a little, but if he got scared then his sister got scared too and he didn't like it when she cried. It was too loud, and the other kids would get mad.

He wasn't sure whether he liked the new foster parents yet. They seemed nice. They didn't have any other kids, but they were friends with Jeremy's kindergarten teacher who was the nicest adult Jeremy had ever met. They had a big apartment with a 'guest room' where Jeremy and Helena were staying, but they said they wanted a house for them all to live in instead.

They had a last name that Jeremy couldn't pronounce, but they were allowed to call them 'Stiles' and 'Derek' so that was ok. Helena couldn't pronounce those names properly either, but neither of them got mad at her for it.

“What do you think, Der?” Stiles asked the other man, looking at him with a fond smile. “Think this is the one? I like it. It's in our price range. It's a good neighbourhood. And the realtor isn't a pushy... uh, _person_ like the last one.”

Derek smiled back, his eyes crinkling up a little. He looked a lot nicer when he smiled properly like that. “You're going to have to watch your language,” he teased Stiles, taking the other man's hand. “I like it too,” he agreed. “It's a nice house.”

“A good house for kids,” Stiles nodded, his eyes going strangely misty. “For a family. We're gonna be such a great family.”


End file.
